Billionaires are evil

[weltweit]

Still she will drive around the block looking for free parking.

A rich friend of mine is the same, always looking for the best deal. It is how he became rich in the first place.

Another is always working, he has a day job and a night job he works 7 days a week..

 

[MickiQ]

There's a scene in a movie (can't remember what it's called) starring Michael J Fox where he is in a helicopter flying over some super wealthy area and the guy he is with says "Look at all these rich people, do you think having all that money makes them happy? You bet it does, they're still smiling 6 months after their dead!!"
This self-righteous shit makes me think of that and I have decided to put my tiny violin away for now and not give this lady a tune on it.

 

[SpookyFrank]

A rich friend of mine is the same, always looking for the best deal. It is how he became rich in the first place.

No it's not. It's how he stays slightly more rich than he might otherwise be.

 

[editor]

the struggle is real

I’m a millionaire and it’s really hard being rich

Mother of two Jennifer Risher calls her new memoir “a coming out” as rich, something she had previously struggled with.

nypost.com

SHUT THE FUCK UP

 

[weltweit]

No it's not. It's how he stays slightly more rich than he might otherwise be.

I didn't mean free parking keeps him rich.
His work is about getting the best deals for things like financial services for which he gets a cut.

 

[Spymaster]

the struggle is real

I’m a millionaire and it’s really hard being rich

Mother of two Jennifer Risher calls her new memoir “a coming out” as rich, something she had previously struggled with.

nypost.com

That's actually less whiny than the title suggests and seems to be more about how to be rich without being an arsehole about it, rather than some kind of appeal for sympathy.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I didn't mean free parking keeps him rich.
His work is about getting the best deals for things like financial services for which he gets a cut.

Presumably he lives in mortal dread of his clients learning to operate Google by themselves.

 

[strung out]

Chuck Feeney has now given away his entire $8bn fortune:

Exclusive: The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke

It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of retail giant Duty Free Shoppers has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now—and he couldn’t be happier.

www.forbes.com

 

[MickiQ]

Chuck Feeney has now given away his entire $8bn fortune:

Exclusive: The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke

It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of retail giant Duty Free Shoppers has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now—and he couldn’t be happier.

www.forbes.com

exceptions prove the rule, there is the odd billionaire that uses his wealth for good (even without dressing as a bat and driving a cool car) but that doesn't eliminate the fact that plenty of them are cunts and indeed especially in the US you get the press pointing to people like Feeney and saying he's typical rather than atypical of the ilk.

 

[Marty1]

Chuck Feeney has now given away his entire $8bn fortune:

Exclusive: The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke

It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of retail giant Duty Free Shoppers has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now—and he couldn’t be happier.

www.forbes.com

Amazing story and a role model for his peers.

Though I doubt the greediest man in the world would part with a penny.

 

[SlideshowBob]

exceptions prove the rule, there is the odd billionaire that uses his wealth for good (even without dressing as a bat and driving a cool car) but that doesn't eliminate the fact that plenty of them are cunts and indeed especially in the US you get the press pointing to people like Feeney and saying he's typical rather than atypical of the ilk.

Remember reading that we tend to overestimate the number of well-intentioned billionaires because for the most part only the somewhat decent ones tend to advertise them while also promoting their philanthropy.

A lot of the ultra-conservative billionaires out there who're constantly pushing for tax cuts to benefit them will prefer to stay in the background, because for the most part any publicity they get isn't going to be overly positive, and they're already filthy rich...so don't actually really need a lot of open publicity anyway.

 

[mauvais]

Even Feeney is an example of something fundamentally broken. Why should one unelected man unilaterally get to decide how $8 billion is apportioned?

 

[weltweit]

Even Feeney is an example of something fundamentally broken. Why should one unelected man unilaterally get to decide how $8 billion is apportioned?

I just heard a piece about Feeney on R4, it said that he had successfully given away his fortune and then signed papers dissolving his foundation, he was living in a rented house with his then wife and didn't even own a car. I was just trying to work out what program it was, because if it was Last Word then perhaps he just died.

 

[yield]

Riding the storm (PDF) PWC. URL: UBS-PwC-Billionaires-Report-2020

We have covered a wide range of developments since this report began in 2015, but some themes have remained prominent: the rise of China, the “Athena factor,” the growing influence of billionaires on philanthropy and the polarization of the billionaire community.

It is this last theme that we revisited in a year of dramatic and far-reaching upheaval. It has been remarked that the 2020 pandemic has created decades of change in just a few months. Billionaires have been no exception to this.

We have seen before how a cohort of billionaire innovators and disruptors, active in tech, healthcare and industry, have contributed to reshaping the economy. COVID-19 accelerated this trend dramatically: by demonstrating the value of the digital world they helped to create, they were able to decisively pull ahead of the pack as they increased their wealth while others’ fell. This is a key moment in economic history, a time of exceptional, Schumpeterian creative destruction. Scientists, computer programmers and engineers are revolutionizing industries at a pace never seen before and they are having a profound impact on the whole of the global economy.

Their influence has ranged well beyond business too. As well as being some of the most generous donors in the heat of the pandemic, they are bringing innovation to philanthropy to give it more strategic impact and raising their game on environmental and social responsibility.

But it has not all been outward-facing. According to our survey of PwC Partners who work with billionaires, like many of us they found time during lockdown to discuss family arrangements and reflect on mortality while reassessing their business and investment strategies. There has been a notable uptick in succession planning as a result.

Hinge moments like wars or pandemics tend to speed up change and leave a lasting impression in all walks of life. As with the aftermath of a storm they also call for renewal and reinvention. This billionaire community is likely to show the way in that effort too. The next generation of entrepreneurs is set to offer its unique perspective on this “new normal” and, with that, support a new era of innovation and change.

"This is a key moment in economic history, a time of exceptional, Schumpeterian creative destruction."

 

[editor]

Q. Why don't these fucking multi millionaire musicians, producers, promoters, venue owners, music labels etc dip in their own big fat pockets and help out the small venues from whence most of their money making acts came from? Cunts.

 

[Mumbles274]

Q. Why don't these fucking multi millionaire musicians, producers, promoters, venue owners, music labels etc dip in their own big fat pockets and help out the small venues from whence most of their money making acts came from? Cunts.

Billionaires have got richer during the pandemic. But apparently its the rest of us that have to suck it up. Isn't trident still going to go ahead.. Billions of pounds more that what this virus would cost

 

[Marty1]

Q. Why don't these fucking multi millionaire musicians, producers, promoters, venue owners, music labels etc dip in their own big fat pockets and help out the small venues from whence most of their money making acts came from? Cunts.

Because as you state - they are cunts (greedy cunts).

What is needed is a wealth tax.

 

[editor]

Because as you state - they are cunts (greedy cunts).

What is needed is a wealth tax.

What's needed is SOCIALISM*. I don't care if someone wants to be a millionaire so long as they share their wealth.


*as in old school totally free NHS etc.

 

[Pickman's model]

Because as you state - they are cunts (greedy cunts).

What is needed is a wealth tax.

Strange how you love some billionaires like djt

 

[ska invita]

George Clooney just sold his tequila business for up to $1 billion

George Clooney is selling his tequila company Casamigos to Diageo for up to $1 billion.

www.cnbc.com

.

i resent this

 

[Pickman's model]

George Clooney just sold his tequila business for up to $1 billion

George Clooney is selling his tequila company Casamigos to Diageo for up to $1 billion.

www.cnbc.com

.

i resent this

This story is three years auld

 

[ska invita]

This story is three years auld

he'll be even richer by now

 

[Pickman's model]

he'll be even richer by now

His net worth half a billion apparently.

 

[yield]

The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism
NYTimes Nov. 27, 2020

outline.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com

outline.com

Most of his fellow millennials, however, are receiving a rotten inheritance — debt, dim job prospects and a figment of a social safety net. The youngest of them were 15 in 2011 when Occupy Wall Street drew a line between the have-a-lots and everyone else; the oldest, if they were lucky, were working in a post-recession economy even before the current recession. Class and inequality have been part of the political conversation for most of their adult lives.

In their time, the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor has pushed left-wing politics back into the American political mainstream. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. trailed Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist candidate, by 20 points among millennial voters in this year’s Democratic presidential primary. And over the last six years, millennials have taken the Democratic Socialists of America from a fringe organization with an average member age of 60 to a national force with chapters in every state and a membership of nearly 100,000, most of them under 35.

According to the consulting firm Accenture, the Silent Generation and baby boomers will gift their heirs up to $30 trillion by 2030, and up to $75 trillion by 2060. These fortunes began to amass decades ago — in some cases centuries. But the concentration of wealth became stratospheric starting in the 1970s, when neoliberalism became the financial sector’s guiding economic philosophy and companies began to obsessively pursue higher returns for shareholders.

“The wealth millennials are inheriting came from a mammoth redistribution away from the working masses, creating a super-rich tiny minority at the expense of a fleeting American dream that is now out of reach to most people,” said Richard D. Wolff, a Marxist and an emeritus economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has published 12 books about class and inequality.

I'm sure that they mean well but the article is horrible. What I'd expect from the New York Times.

 

[yield]

Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change
02.15.2021
Tech oligarchs are encouraging the creation of virtual worlds as a cheap way to avoid problems in the real one.

The future of virtual reality is far more than just video games. Silicon Valley sees the creation of virtual worlds as the ultimate free-market solution to a political problem. In a world of increasing wealth inequality, environmental disaster, and political instability, why not sell everyone a device that whisks them away to a virtual world free of pain and suffering?

Tech billionaires aren’t shy about sharing this. “Some people read this the wrong way and react incorrectly to it. The promise of VR is to make the world you wanted. It is not possible, on Earth, to give everyone all that they would want. Not everyone can have Richard Branson’s private island,” Doom co-creator and former CTO of Oculus John Carmack told Joe Rogan during a 2020 interview. “People react negatively to any talk of economics, but it is resource allocation. You have to make decisions about where things go. Economically, you can deliver a lot more value to a lot of people in the virtual sense.”

Virtual reality is an attractive escape, but it’s not a solution to the world’s ills. The problems of the real world will persist beyond the borders of the metaverse created by companies such as Epic, Valve, and Facebook. Without decisive and radical action, our planet will continue to burn, the gap between the rich and poor will grow, and totalitarian political movements will flourish. All while some of us are plugged into a virtual world.

Worse, the virtual world will be one owned and controlled by the companies that create them. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a Facebook-branded set of VR goggles strapped to an emaciated human face—forever.

Wired is owned by billionaire Donald Newhouse.

 

[MickiQ]

"Hey Plebs take a break from your desperately poor humdrum lives to get just a taste of how rich privileged people live until your VR credit runs out and it is all snatched away from you to plunge you back into poverty"
Can't imagine that it might backfire on them at all.

 

[NoXion]

"It is resource allocation. You have to make decisions about where things go"
seizes the means of production
"Wait no, not like that!"

 

[redsquirrel]

A interview with Bill Gates - not a great piece but it does blow up the idea that the issue is a moral problem.

If there is a credibility gap in listening to Gates on this subject, it comes from the suspicion that he lives in a world so far removed from the rest of us as to raise large blind spots. It’s a small thing, but in a 2014 Rolling Stone interview, Gates mentioned a lunch with Charles Koch, the libertarian billionaire who made huge sums from the oil business and for decades lobbied to reduce US environmental regulations. “He’s a very nice person,” Gates said in that interview, “and he has this incredible business track record.” Koch, along with his late brother David, spent decades funding climate deniers. Gates’ regard for him seems vested entirely in his success as a businessman; no matter how philanthropic, at some level the billionaire class is loyal primarily to itself.

When even a Guardian journalist can see through your bullshit that says something

 

[Edie]

A interview with Bill Gates - not a great piece but it does blow up the idea that the issue is a moral problem.

When even a Guardian journalist can see through your bullshit that says something

Don’t you think human nature is just more complex than that? That like any of us he can hold conflicting views, have blind spots, do shit that completely contradicts what he thinks he thinks.

This myth of the evil rich people is an enjoyable fantasy. But it’s bullshit. Sure, lots will be cunts, but some will be decent people. The idea that somehow a small bunch of evil people are to blame is... laughable.

 

[Pickman's model]

Sure, lots will be cunts, but some will be decent people. The idea that somehow a small bunch of evil people are to blame is... laughable.

Do you have an example to hand of a decent billionaire?